Beer is great for gut health? | Hacker News Reader

Beer is great for gut health?

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46 pointsc42046 comments

“ Conflict of interest statement

CZ and SH were employed by Tsingtao Brewery Co. Ltd. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.”

From the study:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37560062/

LOL!! China's second largest brewery. And wine is out too. Even 1 or 2 drinks has been shown to make you live a shorter life.

https://newsroom.uw.edu/media-coverage/there-no-safe-level-a...

So do a lot of other things. And beyond a certain point, I'm not balling myself up in bubble wrap and living a dull, boring life just so I can eke out another few months on this Earth. I'll take decent care of myself and not do blatantly stupid things. But I'll also enjoy things, and then when it's my time, it's my time. Life is there to be lived.

I may not take quite as an extreme view as Hunter S. Thompson, but he was onto something when he wrote:

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!'"

Is beer and wine really worth it though? For me not really. There's vices I enjoy enough to just not worry about it, but alcohol? I can do without and not be any less happy.

That's your choice, but it's not for everyone. And though addiction is a concern for some people, it's not something everyone who consumes alcohol has to worry about.

No one should pressure you into having alcohol if it's not your choice, but it brings joy to other people's lives in moderation like many other things. If you ate BBQ or heavy desserts every day you'd probably die young in the hospital, too, but that doesn't make them something for everyone to totally avoid always. Many things technically take time off our lives, but are also the small joys which make life worth living in the first place. Balance is key.

Alcohol is a pretty great drug for socially opening up people. That’s a non-negligible benefit you might enjoy from time to time.

Meh. I worked in a nursing home for a little while. You could definitely tell the difference between the people who lived healthy lives and those who "skidded in broadside, used up, totally worn out". Not recommended. They often linger that way for years.

False dichotomy.

But a half a standard drink a day makes you live longer.

Did you just drop a report on study, which only mentions where the study was published and couldn't even bother quoting the title nor link to the actual study nor go into any details ?

This is probably the source btw, with a better summary and link to the actual Lancet article : https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...

That's one or two drinks a day. If you go out drinking once every two weeks and go through 14 standard drinks it's still technically 1 drink a day. In fact, it's noted as a weakness in the discussion section of the study: https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(22)00847-9/full

I’m interested in this area (gut health) - does anyone have a reference handy to other studies that either support or oppose this one’s conclusion?

Today, I don’t drink any alcohol appreciably. If drinking a beer over a week or so might help, I’d be interested in trying it.

Low or moderate beer consumption, with or without alcohol, showed positive effects on health by stimulating the development of a healthy microbiota.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9966200/

Though there are plenty of other things that are good for gut health having nothing to do with beer. I don't know a lot about beer. I'm basically a non-drinker. But I do know a lot about gut health.

If you drink beer and you want to feel good about it, cool. I have no problem with that. But there are lots of other ways to support gut health if that is your real goal.

I prefer consuming chloride salts to keep my (gut) bacteria in check along with deionised water. So refreshing.

I've started drinking more NA beers to cut back on alcohol and I have to say they are getting better!

The question of their value as a probiotic just occurred to me the other day when I was drinking something with a particularly yeasty note coming from the can.

the issue with NA beers are that we still pay "taxed beer prices" on what amounts to fizzy yeast water. The pricing model is ridiculous...the alcohol companies know that people who've found themselves in the misfortune of not being able to drink will pay it.

Isn't that because non-alcoholic beer is a much smaller market and moves way less volume?

Same reason why buying aluminum extrusions and matching fasteners costs the same as buying an entire 3D printer and dismantling it to recover the same parts

Most NA beers are actually harder to produce than regular beers. The process is essentially “make regular beer, then remove the alcohol”

I mentioned in a sibling comment that NA beers are actually harder to produce than regular beers. That would explain the pricing of NA beers, if the production cost of beer was at all related to the actual price of beer. In many jurisdictions, it very much is not.

I think your comment is valuable in pointing out that the taxation scheme and law of beer often encompasses NA beer as well, when it shouldn’t, and in the end that very often hurts the adoption of and distribution possibilities of NA beer.

In other words, if NA beer was treated like a soda it would have a lot less pain in its GTM segment. NA beer can have some low amount of alcohol, but then again so can kombucha. Where I live (Austin, TX), kombucha is regulated like a soda, but NA beer is not. They are fundamentally quite similar (very low ABV fermented beverages) but regulated quite differently. They shouldn’t be - from the perspective of the governing body, NA beers should be treated as bioactive sodas, exactly how kombucha is currently treated. There is no justifiable reason to treat them otherwise

I agree that the NA beer I’ve been exposed to over the last 3-5 years is remarkably better than what I’ve encountered before. To the degree that I like a lot of them on their own terms and not as a substitute for anything else

Isn't all commercial beer pasteurized?

> surprisingly, might even be better than probiotics.

That's not so surprising, since probiotics are necessarily just the rare few bacteria we can grow on demand and fit into a pill. Doesn't mean alcohol is good for your microbiome.

Prebiotics and fiber are probably more effective kinds of supplements. But they'll give you gas so might make you unpopular.

Kefir may provide much of the good bacteria without the alcohol.

But kefir has alcohol.

This is a new one on me. I didn't realize it had some. Fortunately, it has less alcohol than beer.

0.5–2% alcohol which isn’t significant unless you were to drink it by the gallon. that is similar to Kombuchas.

0,002–0,005% for mass produced Kefir in Germany as per Wikipedia.

Mass produced is probably not what you want because it's usually pasteurized.

I still kind of like texture and how it keeps cold so when I drink it in the morning it is refreshing.

Mostly use it to have it as something before I drink coffee not to have one on empty stomach.

Supposedly not all kefir does:

> Does Lifeway Kefir contain any alcohol?

> No. We have formulated our kefir to not contain any alcohol and is safe for the whole family! If you’d like more information about our process, please email info@lifeway.net.

https://lifewaykefir.com/faq/

And other fermented foods like miso and pickles.

And non-fermented foods like orange juice, which can have upwards of 0.5% alcohol content.

“non-fermented”

The whole world is alive with yeast. Without extreme levels of sterilization, all fermentation requires is time and sugar. I suspect that 0.5% comes from fermentation (possibly of the fruit before it’s even harvested/processed).

Oh for sure, but I doubt anyone would call orange juice a 'fermented' drink, compared to wine/beer/kefir/etc.

Alcohol in general is one of those things that is obvious detrimental to health. People posit the benefits and then eventually are disproven time and time again. It’s like anything harmful, take it in moderation or not at all for a healthy long life. Or take it a lot and hope you don’t feel the full effects, but don’t make up stuff to say it’s healthy.

No pleasures in life are worth exchanging for a few extra years in a nursing home in Clacton-On-Sea.

Interesting, because if I drink beer in any significant amount it… does not sit well. Yogurt has never caused that issue.

Perfect example of the whiplash one can get paying too much attention to these kinds of studies. Last month it was that any alcohol is bad, this month it's good for my gut biome.

Personally, my sleep is too dramatically impacted from beer to make it a regular part of my week. Kefir, yogurt and veg seems equally as impactful and they don't make me feel suboptimal the next morning.

More if you are not paying enough attention. This article is not about alcohol being good. It is about beer being good, and even goes on to suggest non-alcoholic beers potentially being a health boost, leaving unstated that we know the alcohol has harmful effects (because this is a feel-good article, not a study). When studies appear to disagree is when we learn the most, such as coffee studies disagreeing pointing us to the differences between filtered and unfiltered coffee or caffeinated and decaffinated, or how 'healthy' oils can become unhealthy when heated past their smoke point in high temperature cooking.

The jury is still out on if this study is correct or not, but for the non-drinkers out there, non alcoholic beers seem to have similar, if not more benefit: https://www.earth.com/news/lager-beer-is-beneficial-for-mens...

It's anything that's traditionally fermented, isn't it? Beer, kefir, cheese, natto etc.

I am reading this article and munching on sauerkraut. Not because I like the taste but because of the potential gut benefits.

Sadly, I cannot stand the taste of beer. Daddy was an avid beer drinker in his youth -- before my time -- and drank so much beer he could tell you by the taste of it if it came in a green or brown bottle.

He lived into his late eighties.

About 70% of the immune system is located in the gut.

I think that's inaccurate. I think about 70 to 80 percent of your immune cells (not system) -- white blood cells, etc. -- are found in the gut.

You can disguise the taste a bit by making a shandy (50/50 beer and 7up or British lemonade) or any fruit juice or squash you like. My dad always said beer is an acquired taste.

I don't know if it's actually in my best interest to learn to drink. I don't seem to tolerate most alcohols very well but I've certainly read a fair amount that suggests that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with positive health outcomes.

Chalk it up to someone with a defective body wistfully looking at stories of "normal" people and knowing that's got no bearing on my life.

But thanks for trying to be helpful. It's a bad habit of mine to do similar and is often met with open hostility which still mystifies me to this day. I guess some people -- like moi -- never learn.

  if it came in a green or brown bottle

That's pretty easy. Green or clear bottles taste more skunky because of the mercaptans (iirc) that form from a reaction with the light. That's why it's typically in brown bottles and why corona tastes so bad.

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